A ma­jor shift in fo­cus re­lat­ed to cli­mate change ac­tion, placed the health is­sues of in­di­vid­u­als, coun­tries and sys­tems in a cen­tral po­si­tion at the COP28 con­fer­ence in Dubai. The de­ci­sion is al­ready be­ing looked for­ward to as a game chang­er in the in­ter­na­tion­al ef­forts to save the world from the en­vi­ron­men­tal dis­as­ter that has al­ready be­gun to im­pact, es­pe­cial­ly in is­land states be­low sea lev­el.

What makes the de­ci­sion so im­por­tant is the re­al com­mit­ment, be­yond emp­ty rhetor­i­cal chat­ter, made by 120 coun­tries, main­ly, a US$300 mil­lion in­put by the Glob­al Fund to pre­pare health sys­tems for the chal­lenges of dis­eases and epi­demics; and a US$100 mil­lion grant by the Rock­e­feller Foun­da­tion to scale-up the so­lu­tions to be pur­sued to counter the cli­mate health crises that are al­ready be­ing ex­pe­ri­enced.

A con­tri­bu­tion of £54 mil­lion from the Unit­ed King­dom gov­ern­ment has al­so been made.

The fund­ing will be di­rect­ed at cli­mate-re­lat­ed health sys­tems; to rais­ing aware­ness of the im­pact of cli­mate change on health; and to ac­cel­er­at­ing glob­al fi­nan­cial sup­port for cli­mate adap­ta­tion in coun­tries where cli­mate change is al­ready a re­al­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to com­mit­ments made at COP28.

These al­ready-made com­mit­ments are con­sid­ered dif­fer­ent and mean­ing­ful com­pared to the well-known prac­tices of big speech­es about un­der­stand­ing the need for change and com­mit­ment to what­ev­er the sub­jects be­ing dis­cussed are. How­ev­er, when lead­ers and del­e­gates re­turn home, all the com­mit­ments made in good faith are for­got­ten.

This time, com­men­ta­tors are not­ing that coun­tries and in­sti­tu­tions have al­ready con­firmed fund­ing to fix­ing and ward­ing-off the re­al health chal­lenges be­ing posed by the in­crease of nox­ious gasses in the on­ly en­vi­ron­ment in which man has so far deemed live­able.

Of sig­nif­i­cance too, is how the fund­ing com­mit­ted is to be used and by which agen­cies. Lo­cal or­gan­i­sa­tions in coun­tries and so­cial in­no­va­tors on the front­lines of the cli­mate dis­as­ter that are work­ing to achieve so­lu­tions will be the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

So too, fund­ing will go to joint pub­lic/pri­vate agen­cies com­mit­ted to strength­en­ing re­silience against the health im­pli­ca­tions of cli­mate change. Africa, South Amer­i­ca, In­dia and coun­tries in need of up­dat­ed health sys­tems are fo­cus ar­eas of the ef­forts. The in­ten­tion is to pro­tect peo­ple against the al­ready de­vel­op­ing health chal­lenges be­ing brought about by the changes in cli­mate: floods, fires, the loss of liv­ing space, ma­te­ri­als and more.

It must, how­ev­er, be ad­mit­ted that the fund­ing so far com­mit­ted is small, and may even be con­sid­ered in­signif­i­cant to meet pop­u­la­tions al­ready be­ing af­fect­ed by cli­mate change. How­ev­er, the point needs to be con­tin­u­ous­ly made, that there is more fi­nan­cial bal­last to this set of pledges and con­tri­bu­tions, small as they may be, com­pared to the pledges of tens of bil­lions made at in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences, in­clud­ing those ar­tic­u­lat­ed at pre­vi­ous COP con­fer­ences, that re­main in the nev­er, nev­er land of promis­es.

“The re­al­i­ty is that we have come this far not just to talk about cli­mate and health, but about the con­se­quences of wa­ter and heat and all that is in­volved in health care,” stat­ed Bar­ba­dos’ Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley, at the con­fer­ence, ac­knowl­edg­ing the need for mean­ing­ful health sup­port for de­vel­op­ing coun­tries with in­ad­e­quate health sys­tems.